On One Year in a F**king Pandemic
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about anniversaries. I specialize in working with folx who are looking for a way through grief, and time always brings us to One Year After, then Two Years. It goes on indefinitely, annoyingly, devastatingly, unevenly. So actually the anniversaries I’m referring to (and this is part of why I’ve spent so much time thinking about it) aren’t really anniversaries at all. They’re the opposite. The annual growth of years that someone or something is no longer. There is no word.
Here are some excerpts from my journal in early March 2020, a year ago:
“Getting pretty worried about COVID-19”
“COVID-19 pandemic really setting in”
“Things feel like they’re about to come to a halt”
My guess is you remember this phase too—The Early Pandemic—when we all jammed ourselves into grocery store aisles naïvely mask-less, the world reeked of off-brand Clorox wipes, and everyone said we just needed two weeks at home (if we were privileged enough to have jobs and infrastructure that would allow us to do so). Two weeks!?
Friends, it’s been a year.
“We all lost our pre-pandemic existences. I’m not going to use the word unpr*cedented again. There is a precedent now and we are living it and it sucks.”
the anniversary of the global covid-19 pandemic & its losses
I know that you know this, but I think it’s worth repeating. It’s been one year that we’ve been living every moment in a global pandemic. One year of real and present danger, death, raging inequity and infrastructural failure, job losses, moral dilemmas, disintegrating boundaries, insurmountable distance, limited supports, no hugging, no lower halves of faces, Zoom birthday parties. It’s been a year of this life that none of us knew was coming. At the time of my writing this, 2,541,319 people have died of COVID-19 worldwide. Two million five hundred forty-one thousand three hundred and nineteen real, human people who mattered to other people.
In his book Loss: Sadness and Depression (that title, I know), John Bowlby writes: “there is a tendency to underestimate how intensely distressing and disabling loss usually is and for how long the distress, and often the disablement, commonly lasts.” Bowlby was specifically referring to the loss of a person--which has in and of itself happened to at least 2,542,319 people this year--but I think we underestimate the impact of loss generally. We’re supposed to just get over it, and when we don’t, we feel disordered or wrong.
Whether the loss of a person, a job, a friend, a plan, an identity, hope, time. We all lost our pre-pandemic existences. I’m not going to use the word unpr*cedented again. There is a precedent now and we are living it and it sucks. It sucks in the particular way that lost things suck. The choices aren’t great. You can dissociate from the present, burn with desire to go back, get sad, get angry, get worried, or accept with extreme heaviness that this is it, this is life now.
In a section titled “Precipitants of a Breakdown,” Bowlby shares, “Sooner or later some at least of those who avoid all conscious grieving break down…It is now well established that there are certain classes of event that can act as precipitants of breakdown.” And the first noted class of event? You guessed it: anniversaries.
how to cope with the anniversary of a loss
I so wish that this was the part where I offer tidy solutions and pro-tips. If I could, I would, I promise you. But I can’t. There is no easy or graceful way to experience the timeline of grief because when something is lost, it never comes back. We won’t ever have 2,541,319 people back. We won’t ever have the last year back.
But when the folx I work with approach a Year, we usually try to figure out a ritual, tradition, or action. Something tangible to mark the day and make some space for the possibility of a natural, human breakdown. It can be writing a list of all that you remember about the last year and then burning it (Safely! Looking at you California!), going to a particular place, listening to a particular song uninterrupted. It could be collecting things from a particular spot, building a small pile of stones, talking out loud to the universe or whatever you believe in. It could be a letter to your future self. It could be screaming at trees, or the ocean, or into a pillow.
Grief has a way of creeping up on you around anniversaries, often called an “Anniversary Reaction.” As Ann Brenoff names in describing the third anniversary of her husband's death, an Anniversary Reaction is “when the anniversary of a loss or trauma triggers memories and paralyzing grief.” Many of us may feel flooded by memories of the losses we’ve experienced this year or consumed by emotion.
If you’ve been feeling a little (or a lot) more tender these days, a little harder on yourself, a little more exhausted, more unsure, more short-fused, if your relationships are feeling strained, if you can’t find the motivation this very moment to improve yourself, live your dreams, and change your life—if you’re having a bit of a f**king breakdown—it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.
Anna Kim is an Associate Clinical Social Worker, a writer, and an adventurer. Anna works with individuals, intimate relationships, families, and groups to support growth and change. She is especially interested in grief & loss, identity & authenticity, and attachment, but appreciates all the infinite, complicated parts of being alive.
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